meridian_rose

I don't really enjoy going into Birmingham city centre these days but we wanted to do the Bear Hunt. This previously ran as a larger event -in 2017 - The Big Sleuth ; I think I must have been mostly on Tumblr at the time because I remember I posted a pic there of a Shakespeare themed bear but no photos here that I can find.

There was also The Big Hoot owl themed trail in 2015, with a penguin parade in 2022.

Below are some collages. The first has photos of the bears. The second is other artwork I photographed during the day out. The third focuses on Ozzy the Bull because he was my favourite thing about the day.

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After the awfulness of January

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Craft photos! I did quite a bit of crafting towards Christmas - needle felt, knitting, baking, and a whole host of mini crafts using walnut shells, cardboard tubes, and wire in various projects.
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There are so many crafts that I love to dabble in, so many I haven't yet tried, things to revisit and things to practice more. I hope everyone has at least one thing, be it scrapbooking, crochet, metalwork, or watercolour painting, that gives them some creative joy :)

We visited Gloucester for the first time. The historic docks (and waterways museum), some of the retail outlet centre, and the cathedral. There wasn't time to visit everything and I needed much longer at the cathedral (and more money and time to do some of the tours); we didn't get near the main museum, barely touched the main shopping area, and didn't go on a boat trip or go into the Soldiers Museum.
The cathedral has a long history as a place of worship, has the tomb of King Edward II, and featured in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
I'd love to visit the city again. It was a pleasant visit, overall clean and welcoming, with some great sights to see including some public art such as The Candle image, info. We parked near the docks and it was a very short walk to the Waterways Museum, and only 10 minutes to the city centre, 15 or so to the cathedral.

I took a lot of photos and here's just a few made into a collage.
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Prompt 6: Share Fannish Collections Lots of blurry pics and rambling under the cut
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Despite my enthusiasm for this year being different I'm struggling a little. So I've been less on social media as that often helps. There's a week long protest logoff at Tumblr 1st-7th February and that's now easy for me to do. I may or not come back to DW before the end of that. There's some things with deadlines I might need to check on anyway.

I hope to recapture my enthusiasm soon!

#writingwednesday will still go ahead at the writing blogs, I'll just post it to Tumblr later.

Hope everyone is doing okay with the weather. Still fairly mild here, some heavy frost, could be some snow in the Midlands tonight.

I haven't sorted photos even to post, let alone caught up on the backlog of things to crosspost from tumblr, and so you're getting this short personal post - but have a recent photo of my doggy niece Winter, (mostly husky) puppy, she'll be one in March.

A few photos I wanted to share. Linked from google photos for the first time so I hope they show up!

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I still don't feel like talking much about personal things but I'm still here and I'm still trying to be positive. Have a few photos instead of my ramblings.
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"I made him cookies. Sand tarts."

source: https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/view_episode_scripts.php?tv-show=midnight-texas-2017&episode=s01e01


In the first episode of "Midnight, Texas", Manfred gets a plate of welcome to the neighbourhood sand tarts from Fiji. They're also magical cookies, since Fiji is a witch, and if he had any bad intentions toward the town's inhabitants, Manfred would, Fiji tells her friend, "be tossing those cookies".


Source: https://karamelmikaelsons.tumblr.com/post/163407460887/dont-worry-i-made-him-cookies

I'd not heard of sand tarts before and some googling gives some interesting information about the Pennsylvanian Dutch settlers who brought them to America, Amish families, and the Christmas tradition of making them.
Sand tarts are dusted with sugar (I guess giving the "sand" texture), powered sugar, and/or have nuts, pecans or almonds most often, as decorations.

I've wanted to make sand tarts since seeing the episode, being a fan of the show, enjoying occasional new forays into the world of cake/biscuit making, and an eclectic pagan :)
So I looked at several recipes of the many available online and chose this one:
Grandma's Sand Tart Cookies

The problem was that American recipes use cups (why don't you weigh things?! Also why does butter come in sticks?! Why are even your tablespoons bigger than ours?! Why Fahrenheit?!) so I had to do a bit of converting via some websites.
Then I came to make the dough and…I'm not feeding an entire village! So I halved the mixture and I probably should have rolled a bit thinner (I had to increase the cooking time) and still got 40 cookies. For comparison I tend to make about 15-20 biscuits/cookies from a UK recipe.
They are much approved of by the family though so a few more were welcome, and I might make them again :)

I made rounds, stars, a couple of reindeers, and a few Christmas tree shapes.
Here is a photo:



This is also an entry for the gameofcards fandom food challenge.

~Magickal Graphics~



(My pumpkin. There are pumpkin photos from previous years here)

All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, is the modern name in English for the great north European festival which signalled the end of the light and warm half of the year, and ushered in the cold and dark one, and so divided the season of autumn from that of winter in these northern lands. It was known in Irish as Samhain, summer’s end; in Welsh as Nos Galan Gaeaf, “winter’s eve”; in Anglo-Saxon as Blodmonath, “blood month”; and in Norse as the “winter nights”. As such it was one of the greatest religious festivals of the ancient northern pagan year - x

Samhain also known as Halloween, Hallowe'en, All Hallows Eve, Lá Samhna and Allhelgona amongst others. It takes place on the last day of October. It is the end of summer, where only summer and winter are recognised as seasons. In certain traditions this is the start of the new year. Samhain is celebrated as the Dia de los Muertos in Mexico (Day of the Dead--usually held on November 1) and All Saints Day (also on November 1) by the Catholic church.
It is the last of the harvest festivals in the Wheel of the Year.
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